i'm david gregory, this is "press pass." this week a critical test for the republican party as it does post election soul searching, all the while there's a high stakes fiscal cliff set of talks going on in washington. rick santorum, one of gop's most outspoken republican leaders and nationally he's raising 2016 speculation. let's get right to it. how do you look at 2016 right now? there's expectation you'll be in the hunt. where is your head now? >> my head now is we've got a lot on our plate. there's so much -- so much as i said during the campaign, this is the most critical election in our country's history and seeing

the consequence now here in washington now around the world. we're trying to stay engaged. i started an organization, patriot voices and we got involved in that. we got involved in the treaty on capitol hill, they were trying to pass a u.n. treaty that we felt was an overreach, something that would involve the united nations in the rights of parents and being able to provide was best for their disabled children and as well as other things that we are disconcerning about the u.n. and reach here. i think most people would say about but for our action and what we did, the senate probably would have passed that. we'll stay ingauged on capitol hill there's a lot of folks that want to -- republicans that want to move in another direction. want to sort of walk away from the founding principles and what republicans have stood for. we're going to hold their feet to the fire and present a different vision. >> would you like to go through

it again? do you think you could win if you did it again? >> what i've said is it's four years from now. i'm going to keep my options open and we're going to stay involved in the fray and wait and see how things turn out. i felt like we were well positioned in 2012 to be the candidate that barack obama really didn't want to run against. and we'll wait and see how 2016 turns out. >> what do you take away from the race? what's the big lesson from the campaign? >> a couple of things. this idea we have to walk away from certain issues because they are not winning issues anymore, my response to that is when we play defense, we lose. and mitt romney, john mccain if you go before that, refused to play offense. the president played offense. the people were stunned and republicans were stunned he was going out there and playing offense on abortion and planned parenthood and running ads.

what we did, respond, we're not that bad. the president of the united states as a state senator in illinois voted for infanticide, this man has the most radical record on issues of any president in history. we didn't bring them up at all. unless you feel comfortable in your skin on any issue, then you're going to have a hard time playing offense on that issue. we had candidates that didn't feel comfortable on these issues and we played defense and therefore we lost. >> this is the idea. this warning that if romney loses there would be people who said you weren't conservative enough. >> it wasn't -- mitt romney held the same positions that i did, but he didn't weave them into the discussion. here's our vision for america. here's -- let me talk to all voters. i always say -- mitt romney focused as well as he should

have on the economy but he talked about jobs and jobs and jobs. 92% of americans roughly of americans looking for work according to the unemployment numbers have a job. so who are you talking to? people -- that other 92%, they are concerned about their job and may be improving their job are concerned about a whole lot of other issues. national security, i've been very active on. i think we need a candidate who is comfortable in their skin, with the positions that mitt romney said he held. it wasn't he wasn't conservative enough and positions he articulated but didn't run a campaign on all of the issues and bring them to the floor that was convincing that he was going to do something. >> as you think about the future of the republican party, i talked to conservatives and they say we're not sufficiently a party of working people. as all of the constituency groups that the president did so well with, particularly latinos, what is the future of the

republican party? >> the future of the republican party is a party that understands that limited government, limited government and free markets is not enough. that we have to have a message to say, how does that work for you? and that's why we put together specific policies that did in fact and free market policies that did in fact address lower and middle income americans. if we don't do that and go out and say, here's how -- for example, barack obama sort of stepped on it when he said you didn't build that. mitt romney went out and legitimately criticized for him but went out with a bunch of small business people and not so small business people. we could have gone out there with the people who work for the small business person. the person who knows the owner of that business and says we built this together. here's how this helps -- here's what these policies help me. and i don't think we did that --

i know we didn't do that. we didn't even try to do that. that's what we tried to do in our race. and i'm certainly going to be out there and have been out there already. i wrote an op-ed after the election for "usa today", it's not so much about latinos or not doing well among minorities, it's not doing well among that group of voters who don't think that we care about working men and women triesing to rise in society and not just care about the great achievers. one of the other things, republicans tend to come across, we want folks to take risk and be out there on their own. a lot of folks in america want to volunteer after they punch the clock at 5:00. they want to be home with their family and out with their friends. they want a good job and want to have the opportunity to rise but they are very happy having stability and security in their life and not reaching for the brass ring that republicans tend

to just seem focus too much on. there are different elements of america that share our values but we aren't talking to them. >> we'll be back with more with rick santorum after this.

we're back with rick santorum. taxes, there seem to be a lot more conservatives on capitol hill saying, go ahead, give on tax rates so that we can get a better deal that can address

medicare, address some of the things we care about. you don't buy that and don't think it's the right approach? >> i don't think this president is willing to deal. i haven't seen anything in this president's four years or since the election that he's really interested in fundamentally. he is addicted to spending. he's a spending addict. the problem is we have a lot of spending addicts on capitol hill, republicans and democrats. so we need a real radical intervention here. if you got an addiction, you've got to do something radical to pull that person back. >> does he have have the leverage though? >> he does. >> get the greatest tax increase? >> the greatest leverage he has he put together a deal with the republicans a year ago that gives him pretty much what he wants. taxes back to the pre-bush rates. he gets all tax increases and can blame the ones not popular on republicans for not negotiating. he gets something he'll never get, never get in a negotiation. if you look at the spending cuts, half out of defense, half

out of domestic. defense makes up 16% of the budget. the rest is domestic. there's no way that you're going to have any kind of budget deal that's negotiated that's going to take as much as r out of defense. >> you think he has leverage because he can say go over the cliff. >> he wants the defense cuts. he gets all of the defense cuts, more than he would get in a negotiation and all of tax increases, including the money from the unpopular ones. he wants the money because he wants more spending -- wants to be able to spend more. and he gets really a fairly small down payment on domestic discretionary cuts, half a trillion dollars is a drop in the bucket of what we have to do. he gets two things he wants. >> one of things he's going to be facing in the second term is a middle east that's in even more turmoil than first term. what would you do about syria right now? >> the big problem here is

radical islam and the president's refusal to address the issue. the president -- here's a president that ran on women's issues and we have egypt imposing sharia law and you don't hear a word. women have to have head coverings and have no rights and you don't hear the president condemn sharia or radical islam or haven't heard him talk about the problems that are now coming up with muslim brotherhood in control of egypt, in libya and we see obviously elements of muslim brotherhood as part of the syrian lives. you see it going on in jordan. this neighborhood for israel is getting uncomfortable. used to be surrounding israel were some some cases with the exception of jordan, either cool pieces or hostile in the case of syria and lebanon. but they were controlled by basically nonreligious dictators. now we have dictators as you're seeing more doing in egypt,

dictating a new constitution. but now you have sharia law and radical islamists who have a thee logical reason to go after the state of israel. this is a much more dangerous world and barack obama is responsible for it. because he engendered this movement by throwing mubarak under the bus -- >> perhaps you're overstating how much influence he had over being able to keep the previous pharaoh in power in egypt. what would you do about syria at this point that looks to be a regime on the brink of something and not a lot of great options? >> that's the problem. you asked me the question because of the policies of this administration we have two horrible options. which horrible option do you want to take? do you want a dictator alied with iran bg